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Read a word document

I need a free scipt that can read the text from a .doc file without COM

I have found this function but it's not working on every doc.
sometimes $thisline contains one question marks(�) after each character.
I think it has something to do with the charset.I have tried to convert the string to utf-8 or other formats but it doesnt work. pls help
function parseWord($userDoc) {
$fileHandle = fopen($userDoc, "r");
$line = @fread($fileHandle, filesize($userDoc));

I've looked myself at a few options for word document reading in php, but unfortunately I only came across a paid solution. At my company we use PHP Word Lib (http://www.phpwordlib.motion-bg.com/) to read a word document into plain text. However, this script is encoded so you have to run Zend Optimizer on your server in order for it to work.